Indian creator monetization startup TagMango on Friday announced that it has raised around INR 5.5 crore in a seed round funding led by Y Combinator, Kevin Lin (co-founder of Twitch), XRM Media, Pioneer Fund, and Angel Investors from the US and UAE.
Tapping into the creator-audience interaction space, the company aims to scale the Indian creator’s ecosystem by empowering homegrown creators with sophisticated monetization channels, tools, and features to build a sustainable business.
And by turning Indian creators into entrepreneurs, the startup aims to foster the Indian creator’s ecosystem by offering an opportunity to build a brand-independent revenue stream, establish more meaningful interactions, and build a lasting community.
The company has already on-boarded over 3,000 organic creators in the soft launch with about 50 creators enjoying a million-plus following and 200 creators with over 100,000 followers across social media platforms. The amount raised will enable the brand to build tech capabilities and expand its creator base with a keen focus on Bharat.
The Indian creator’s ecosystem is one of the fastest-growing in the world. However, the pandemic and ban of social networking platforms along with a growing number of creators has posed several challenges for the homegrown creators. There aren’t enough monetization opportunities including brand collaborations which are inconsistent. Also, the fact that there is no one-stop platform to showcase a creators’ credibility and talent, most brand collaborations are offered to the top-most influencers who have been featured across brands. The startup bridges this gap by offering a platform that empowers creators to become entrepreneurs by running an independent and sustainable digital business, according to a statement released by the company.
Their tools include exclusive content (podcast, video, and more), one-on-one with creators, video chats, and community hangouts to give the creators’ audience a more meaningful engagement avenue.
“We deeply understand the passion that drives our tribe but more often than not it’s not coupled with avenues to sustain a living. Today with access to the internet and smartphones penetrated across the nooks and corners of Bharat, anyone can dream to be a creator and curate a community. We at TagMango are on a mission to turn their dreams into an ambitious career empowering them with content monetization tools and a platform to foster lasting communities. With these funds, we are looking to build more and more features, hire top talent, and onboard the biggest creators that are in India and not just restrict ourselves to tier I cities but also tier II and tier III cities,” remarked Divyanshu Damani and Mohammad Hasan, founders, TagMango.
Some of the creators they have on their platforms are Nikita Sharma, Digital Pratik, Shakti Arora, Abby Viral, and Paritosh Anand. The company enables creators who know how to build loyal audiences but don’t know how to monetize this audience and maintains that it is giving them a ready platform to build and test out with monetizable services.
By harnessing the insights, the platform is targeting the next 500 million internet users of India. The company claims to be on track to introduce the Indian creator ecosystem and brands the power of communities and mobilizes them through customized and hyper-personal engagement.
“We are drawn to the TagMango team’s passion for helping creators. They have created a flexible platform for creators of India to explore more personalized avenues to make a living based on each creator’s unique relationship with their community. We are thrilled to contribute to the brand’s future growth and expansion in the vast, underpenetrated segment and are absolutely excited to be a part of their journey, which has worldwide potential,” added Kevin Lin, co-founder, Twitch TV, in the following statement.